Advances in digital video camera technology have resulted in high quality cameras with lower cost and greater image resolution. This has permitted facility owners to deploy an increasing number of cameras that must be monitored by a fixed size security staff. Critical to making the existing staff as productive as possible is to provide additional information on which cameras have the most important information. When an event of interest occurs, being able to easily select cameras in the same physical vicinity as the event of interest will allow security personal to better assess the event and take the appropriate action. However, maintaining location information in large camera systems is difficult and expensive requiring an additional step by the installer to correctly annotate the camera's position.
Furthermore, cameras are frequently moved or added incrementally causing the information to be incorrect or non-existent. Cameras can become “lost” where they may be functioning but a repair person servicing the camera will require extra time to find the exact location of the camera requiring attention.
The embodiments disclosed herein therefore directly address the shortcomings of known camera networks by providing a system and method for automatically estimating the spatial positions of cameras in the camera network.